Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Prettier

While the presentation is from another era and sounds a little hokey, it's actually pretty good advice.  And fun.


We think of the decade before we were born as so ancient when we are young ourselves. But the arithmetic tells me this is darn close to my era.

2 comments:

RichardJohnson said...

While the presentation is from another era and sounds a little hokey, it's actually pretty good advice. And fun.

That is what a teenager circa 2013- in the teens of this century- found out about a book for teens published 6 decades before.

Maya Van Wagenen read a book by Betty Cornell, a former beauty queen: Betty Cornell’s Teen-Age Popularity Guide, published in 1951. Maya's father had bought the book in a thrift store years ago, and brought the book home as the result of an office clean-up.
Maya, then in 8th grade, decided to read a chapter a month and put into practice the advice the book gave, and write up the results. (Her mother made the suggestion.)

She expected minimal results from following the advice in the book-what good will come about from following advice on how to comb your hair- but was pleasantly surprised. Following advice in the book got her out of her comfort zone. Following some of the grooming and wardrobe suggestions got her responses that, while she may not have always like the responses, taught her that she could cope pretty well with the responses. The feedback she got also presented her with interactions she ordinarily wouldn't have gotten encouraging an introvert to become more outgoing. The book suggested that she initiate conversations with schoolmates she ordinarily wouldn't have conversed with. She found out that she could handle such interactions, and became more confident.


She wrote a book about her year: Popular: Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek.
It's a good read.

dmoelling said...

The old corny CORONET and Jack Handy films for students were easy to laugh at but they were careful to have good solid advice. They also did series on parts of the economy. I remember they even did one on "Truck Farmers" with migrant (poor white people) workers. They didn't mock anyone just talked about how they worked and how important the work was to society.

The teacher didn't need to take them that seriously but by not having to make the lesson herself, made it more palatable to students. They reinforced things you hopefully learned at home, church and other places.